I have only vague memories of playing Atari 2600 games at my cousin’s house as a kid. Somewhere in those hazy recollections are tanks of different colours, firing at each other across screens filled with obstacles. It’s no doubt the same for lots of gamers of a similar age, as out of the nine launch titles for the Atari 2600, Combat is by far the most renowned. The main reason for its popularity is that it was the only game that came in the original Atari VCS box. It was therefore the first home console experience for thousands of gamers in the late seventies and early eighties. Its reputation isn’t solely based on numbers though. Combat is also considered a bit of a classic. It’s one of only two 1977 games to appear in the 1001 Video Games to Play Before You Die book, so one I was quite keen to check out.
The box for Combat. I’m not sure whether the packaging was included when getting the game with the VCS console. I’m thinking not.
Image Credit: Moby Games
Like Video Olympics, Combat was programmed by Joe Decuir, although he has stated in interviews that he deserves little credit. In his opinion he simply did the donkey work, following the design work of Ron Milner and Steve Mayer before handing the game to lead cartridge programmer Larry Wagner to actually make it fun. The concept for the game wasn’t anything new to begin with, basically combining gameplay from two previous arcade games. The first of those games was Tank, a top-down game where two players control tanks, attempting to shoot each other while navigating through mazes and avoiding mines. The second was Jet Fighter, another top-down coin-op, with this one requiring two players to fly planes and attempt to shoot each other as many times as possible within a set time limit. Atari combined the two, and in typical style, applied numerous variations to the resulting games.
The original flyer for the Tank arcade game.
Image Credit: The Arcade Flyer Archive
The original flyer for the Jet Fighter arcade game.
Image Credit: The Arcade Flyer Archive
As I usually do, I’ll describe the variations first before discussing the games themselves:
Weaponry Variations
Straight Missile
This is the standard weapon. Each player’s tank or plane fires single bullets in straight lines. Each shot travels most of the way across the screen, but not the whole distance.
Guided Missile
By far the coolest feature in Combat, players can curve their shots towards opponents by turning their tank or plane after firing. There’s little more exhilarating than hitting your invisible opponent that was hiding behind a wall by swinging a shot around it.
Machine Guns
This weapon is only available in two Bi-Plane variations. Each shot travels only a short distance, but players can hold down the fire button to pump out rapid bursts. Makes for some tight dog fights.
Direct Hit
This variation is only included in the two Tank-Pong games. It just means you can shoot your opponent directly and don’t have to rebound it off a wall first.
Billiard Hit
This variation is also only included in the two Tank-Pong games, but requires you to rebound shots off a wall to hit your opponent.
This little chart is critical to figuring out what variations apply to which “game” on the Combat cartridge.
Image Credit: Atari Age
Location Variations
Open Field
This is the standard location. There is nothing on the screen apart from the player’s tank or plane.
Easy Maze
These Tank variations have a fairly simple maze structure, allowing players to hide behind walls (and shoot around them with guided missiles).
Complex Maze
These variations function the same as Easy Maze except, as the name suggests, the maze is more complex. I enjoyed these the most out of the locations, as they created the most strategy and opportunity for skill to come into play.
Clouds
The Clouds location is related to the Bi-Plane and Jet games. They are not purely aesthetic, as player’s planes are temporarily hidden when they fly through them. They’re useful for changing direction unseen, surprising your opponent with the angle you reappear on.
An ad for Combat. Notice the screenshots say Jet Fighter and Tank, the names of the arcade machines it stole from. There is no Jet Fighter game on the cartridge.
Image Credit: Atari Age
Games
Tank (Game 01 – 05)
This is the basic Tank game that many people will remember as being Combat. Each player moves a tank around the screen with the joystick, and fires an unlimited amount of missiles at their opponent. It’s more enjoyable than that description might sound, and like many of these early games, has a simple purity to it that has inevitably been muddied over the years. When a missile leaves the screen in one direction, it reappears out of the opposite side, allowing spatially-skilled players to pull off some great surprise hits. I really enjoyed the Guided Missile variations (Game 01, 02 and 04), and gained enormous satisfaction from hitting my wife’s tank when she thought she was safe.
Tank (Game 01): A standard game of Tank with Guided Missiles in an Open Field.
Tank Game 02: A standard game of Tank with Guided Missiles in an Easy Maze.
Tank-Pong (Game 06 to 09)
This is the same as Tank, except that missiles bounce off walls and the edges of the screen in a similar way to the ball in Pong. Two of the four variations still allow players to hit their opponent with direct shots (as in not rebounded) whereas the other two require a rebound before contact can be made. We didn’t enjoy Tank-Pong as much as the standard Tank game, since it involved a lot more luck. Having direct shots pass through tanks is a bit silly and frustrating too.
Tank-Pong (Game 07): This is the Complex Maze. In this particular game you can hit your opponent on the rebound or directly.
Invisible Tank (Game 10 to 11)
Invisible Tank is awesome! It’s the same as Tank except your vehicle is invisible if not shooting. Each tank will briefly flash when they fire off a missile, giving their opponent a quick view of their location. There’s something immensely satisfying about successfully estimating where your opponent’s tank is, and hitting it with a swinging Guided Missile. I should point out that a player’s tank will start blinking if they don’t shoot for a certain amount of time, meaning you can’t hide forever.
Invisible Tank (Game 10): Well, what did you expect!?
Invisible Tank-Pong (Game 12 to 14)
Tank-Pong…with invisible tanks. Enough said.
Invisible Tank-Pong (Game 14): Notice that you can see the pink tank as it has fired a projectile. As soon as the projectile disappears, so does the tank. In this particular game, you can only hit your opponent by rebounding off a wall first.
Bi-Plane (Game 15 to 20)
The first of the two airborne games on the cartridge, Bi-Plane, gives each player the opportunity to have a dogfight in early twentieth century style bi-planes. Unlike Tank and Jet, Bi-Plane has a side on view, offering a nice bit of variety to gameplay. When it comes down to it though, it’s still all about shooting your opponent before they can shoot you. Guided missiles are once again a heap of fun, and the cloud variations create great cover to change direction without your opponent knowing it. There were some surprising deviations from the one on one action too, with Game 19 letting both players control two planes at once and Game 20 setting one enormous jet against three standard bi-planes. The latter game may not have offered a fair fight, but it was a welcome bit of variety.
Bi-Plane (Game 17): This is the only game with machine guns (rapid fire, but short distance), which is a pity.
Bi-Plane (Game 19): This game gives both players two planes that move in union.
Bi-Plane (Game 020): Now here’s an interesting idea. One player controls a huge jet with bigger bullets and faster flying power. The other has three bi-planes, meaning three shots at once. The big plane is still overpowered.
Jet (Game 21 to 27)
I found Jet to be the most enjoyable game on Combat. I have a feeling that I might think differently had I been up against a more skilled opponent when playing Tank, but given what I had, the pace of Jet was a much more exciting experience. Yes, it’s almost identical to Bi-Plane, but the controls feel more intuitive (moving the joystick left and right changes your direction rather than up and down), and the jets do move a bit quicker than the bi-planes.
Jet (Game 21): Zooming around in jets and hitting your opponent through the edge of the screen with swinging guided missiles doesn’t require detailed graphics and sound to be fun.
Jet (Game 25): Two on two makes for more bullets, but it also makes for more targets.
Jet (Game 26): Three on one seems pretty unfair, but it was hard to tell without two similarly experienced gamers playing.
Below is a video I put together that includes a bunch of the games on the cartridge. The first thing you’ll notice is just how much player 2 is struggling, particularly when it comes to the various Tank games. What Combat showed more than the other Atari games my wife and I have played together, is that there’s no substitution for decades of gaming experience. I didn’t even notice when playing that the controls for each game type were completely different to each other. I just started moving my vehicle the way my brain intuitively told me to do it. It was only afterwards that I realised how challenging it must have been for my wife. In Tank, you press up to move forward, left to turn left, and right to turn right, no matter which way your tank is facing. So if your tank is facing down, you still press up to move forward. I can see now just how much that might mess with someone that hasn’t played a bazillion games before. Some goes for Bi-Plane (where you push up to tilt up and down to tilt down, even if you’re upside down) and Jet (where you push left to to turn left and right to turn right, no matter what direction you’re facing). I’m glad there will be less two player only games on the list in future, as my poor wife might not be so eager after I destroyed her over and over in Combat while her brain threatened to explode.
As usual, I’ve included some music from 1977. It’s From Here to Eternity by Giorgio. Can anyone say Daft Punk, 20 years before Discovery?!
The Combat (1977) RetroCard has now been added to the RetroCard Shop. It’s a common card, so therefore costs 10 smacks and has a limited release of 120.
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